CSI: Knightmare
by Drassil
Summary: Knightmare's 3rd Phase is approaching, but a crime has been committed in the Dungeon, and can only be solved by Crime Scene Investigators from another place and time. A crossover.
1. Chapter 1

Gil Grissom, Horatio Caine and Mac Taylor stood in the Great Hall of Knightmare Castle, as the Dungeon Master and the wizard explained where they were and how they had got there.

"...And so the Dungeon sustains itself by drawing from different places, different times - even from myth and fairytale," revealed Merlin.

"From fiction?" asked Grissom.

"Some folk would say that this realm is fiction," said Treguard. After staring briefly in your direction, he continued, turning his attention back to Grissom. "And some would regard your dimension the same way. But here and now, we are all quite real."

Mac looked at the wizard. "So you're not just called Merlin - you're the Merlin, brought here from Arthurian legend?"

"Not so much brought here, as derived. I've not been removed from my home plane, and nor have you. You are both here with us in 1989, and back - or should that be forward? - in the New World of 2007."

Horatio had been looking into the fireplace, a valuable excuse to wear his shades. He turned slowly toward Merlin. "1989?"

"You'll have to excuse us," responded Treguard. "We're not used to questioning the finer workings of Knightmare, as far as we ourselves can grasp them. You gentlemen, on the other hand, are experts at investigating what you see before you, and uncovering its secrets. Your reputations precede you across the realms. That is partly why Merlin used his powers, and the Dungeon's, to bring you here."

"Sir," said Mac, "I think it's about time you told us exactly why we're here."

"Why? Why else?" Merlin sounded almost gleeful. His eyes sparkled in the candlelight. "There's been a murder!"

* * *

The three Crime Scene Investigators stood over the dead body. "So this," declared Horatio, "is our DB. The Dwarf, Bumptious."

Grissom raised his eyebrows. "Well, he certainly doesn't look Sleepy." He turned to Mac.

Mac appeared stern. "Our equipment will be primitive at best. We'll have our work cut out finding his killer." Mac looked at Horatio.

Horatio donned his sunglasses. "Then, gentlemen... it's off to work we go."


	2. Chapter 2

The Dungeon had reformed for the third Phase of Adventuring, which was due to start soon. But for much of the Dungeon, it had been less a reformation and more an unpausing, with many locations and people exactly (or almost exactly) as they had been at the end of the second Phase. Among these was the Honorary Guild of Goldminers' pit where Bumptious the Dwarf had worked - and where his body was found. Once his death had been reported, Merlin proposed to use his magic to reveal the identity of the murderer; but HOGG refused to allow it, either because they distrusted the aging wizard's abilities, or feared he wouldn't be impartial, or both. But when Merlin suggested an independent investigation of the crime by skilled detectives from another realm entirely, the Guild agreed. So it was that Mac, Horatio and Grissom found themselves a long way from New York, Miami and Las Vegas, processing the crime scene. In the absence of 21st century field kits, they were relying on ink and parchment sketching for observations, on cloths and knapsacks for evidence collection, and on the hope that under such circumstances, their best would be good enough. Having gathered all they could, they travelled back to Knightmare Castle using RETURN spells furnished by Treguard, the only magic that HOGG's lengthy crime scene regulations would allow to be cast in the vicinity.

Merlin greeted them upon their return. "The body will be made available for a postmortem in due course. And a laboratory has been prepared for you elsewhere in the castle. Though you may find it a trifle quaint!"

"We have several pieces of evidence," commented Grissom. "I don't suppose you could summon any of our lab techs?" He resisted an urge to add, "Even Hodges."

"If we bring any more of you," replied Treguard, "There will be insufficient magic to allow adventurers to come across when dungeoneering resumes. Four is our limit."

"Four?"

"Oh yes!" Merlin had quite forgotten to tell them. "Questing is done in fours. Your fourth comrade arrived while you were at the crime scene. As we speak, he is interviewing the man who found the body."

* * *

A grey, wispy-legged spider crept across the table between the Apprentice and CSI Michael Keppler. Bakc in his new home of Las Vegas, he was but weeks away from death at the hands of Frank McCarty, the crooked cop who had both saved and damned him; but here and now in the realm of Knightmare, he was alive, well, and holding a healthy suspicion of the scruffy yet unruffled man sitting opposite.

"I already told the Guild what happened. You should've got one of them talking crows. I'll only be repeating meself."

"Then it shouldn't be too hard for you, should it?" countered Keppler, with a slight smile.

"Id been off sick. Dungeon Pox. Went on for ages. Then I got better. I went back to the mine to see if I still had a job in the new Phase. I was expecting the Dwarf to put me through one of his trubunals. Instead he was dead. So I went off to report it."

"'The Dwarf'? That's not very respectful, is it?" remarked the cleaner-shaven of the two.

"That's what I called him. He never told me his name, and I never told him mine." Before Keppler could speak, the Apprentice continued. "Not that he looked like a dwarf, being tall an' all. No, Ididn't much like him, but that don'... that doesn't mean I'd kill him. I mean, you don't like me, but would you kill me?"

"It depends how much paperwork there'd be," shrugged Keppler. He put his hands palms down on the table. Perhaps he was enjoying this too much. He had new colleagues to meet, who would surely be better company."

"Anything else you want to ask... Sir?"

"At the moment, no. You can go. But be aware that if you're lying to us, we will find out, and the banter at our next meeting won't be quite so light." Keppler often hoped that suspects were lying, as it made it all the more satisfying when the forensic work, though lonely, told him the truth. He took a last look as the Apprentice, scruffy but unruffled, walked out the room. It was too early to brand him a potential murderer; but Keppler knew when someone was casting their shadow on the inside, when a man had something to hide.


	3. Chapter 3

After Keppler and the other CSIs had shaken hands - evne though he and Grissom were technically Las Vegas colleagues too, they'd not yet met there due to Grissom's current sabbatical - Merlin led them over to a large chest. Treguard lifted the lid, revealing what was, to intents and purposes -

"Is that what it looks like?" asked Mac.

- a TV monitor.

"This is the Chest of Current Team Viewing," specified Merlin. With an unsuppressed chuckle, he added, "or CCTV for short!"

"A rose by any other name," murmured Grissom.

"Impressive," opined Horatio. "How will it help us?"

"Being a chest, it stores things," Treguard explained, "and until a new team takes on the Dungeon, the adventures of the most recent team are stored within. Including an encounter with Bumptious at what is now the crime scene."

"It should provide valuable clues," declared Merlin. Then he turned to the Dungeon Master. "Oh, by the way, Treguard, I haven't forgotten your request for a wall-mounted flat-screen quest monitor. I do hope you can hold on until Christmas!" Treguard looked distinctly embarrassed.

With a flourish of his wand and a spatter of verbal commands, with either the former or the latter quite possibly just for effect, Merlin initiated the 'CCTV playback'. The CSIs watched as a dungeoneer named Karen dropped into the mining pit, landing on a plunger and flooring Bumptious with an explosion. A maid named Gretel helped to revive him with a damp cloth, but the CSIs speculated about head trauma as a possible cause of death. Following a "tribunal" in which Bumptious questioned Kaen and found her innocent, the dungeoner left the scene, while Bumptious and Gretel departed for a cup of tea, marking the end of the encounter. As the screen went blank, Keppler turned to Grissom.

"You look puzzled. Is it because tea drinking didn't start in Europe until the 17th century?"

"1657," Mac specified. He thought of his girlfriend Peyton in New York, a Londonian ex-pat who had armed herself with such facts in her forlorn refusal to surrender to coffee.

"This may not be Europe," replied Grissom. "I was wincing at that maid."

"Don't worry, Gil." Horatio had donned the sunglasses of inscrutability. "I'll interview her."

* * *

Dabbing her eyes with a white handkerchief, Gretel looked up at the nice man with the auburn hair. Tilting his head in a sympathetic gesture, he told her to take her time. She cried some more.

"Oh, did Merlin tell you my name? I'm Gretel, but sometimes I get called Vesta."

"Mac was in the room too. "Roman goddess of hearth and home," came the verbal footnote. "You must be a good maid."

"Oh, I am!"

Horatio moved a little closer to where Gretel was sitting. "Miss, are you ready to tell us what happened when you and Bumptious went for tea?"

"Oh yes. We went to see the Tea Man. That's what I call him. He's very old, but he makes the most yummy tea! Usually we get the tea and go off, but thistime Bumptious and the Tea Man said they needed to talk about something, and could I leave them alone for a little while? So I took my tea and Bumptious' tea back to the mine and waited." The CSIs had indeed found two drinking vessels at the crime scene. "But I got bored andwent off to see Mildread. If only I'd waited for longer!" She started crying again.

"It wasn't your fault," emphasised Horatio. Unless Gretel was the killer, in which case it was. Naive as she seemed, the evidence would have to rule her out, and prove that her grief wasn't the mask that Horatio had seen so many times before on the manicured, malevolent madams of Miami.

"Poor Bumptious," sniffed the distressed damsel. "I hope you find the horrible meany who killed him and put him in prison for a long long time!"

"We will catch the killer." Horatio was adamant. "And the killer will be punished." Whatever universe he was in, crime was crime, and he would fight it.

"We'll need to speak to the Tea Man," Mac told Gretel. "Can you tell us where to find him?"

"Yes, certainly, Mr. Taylor. And do you want to know the Tea Man's proper name? It's the Infuser. Harris the Infuser."


	4. Chapter 4

Beneath the off-white stalactites, Mac was growing frustrated.

"Mr. Harris, we're investigating a murder, and you may have been the last person to see the victim alive. Do yourself a favour and drop the charade."

A pause. "Very well." The accent was gone, and a moment later, so was the brown shawl. Hordriss glared at Mac and Horatio. "One assumed it was courtesy enough that one agreed to be interrogated. You have invaded one's time and one's privacy."

"And we'll continue to," declared Horatio, "until you cooperate. We know you spoke to Bumptious alone after giving him and Gretel tea. What did you discuss?"

Hordriss decided that there was more dignity in presenting information himself than in being harangued for it any further. "One was supplying the Dwarf with Uppers."

"You were dealing speed?"

"No, one has no speed spells yet. Upper pills, taken at mild but regular dosage via the Dwarf's tea, enabled him to maintain a stature above that of his fellow dwarves. An advantage in his mine work for which he was most grateful."

"And you wanted to renegotiate the deal."

"One was entitled to more gold than one was being paid, and told him so. The Dwarf was not happy, and would not agree. One dismissed him to reconsider in his own time."

"So you were angry too?"

Hordriss smiled. "If you are implying that one acted on one's displeasure, then one is flattered that you deem one capable of extinguishing life. One was indeed insulted by the Dwarf, but this was a regular occurrence. His kind are wretched creatures, starved of light and intellectual stimulation, and ill-tempered as a consequence. But one would rather see a dwarf alive, and indebted, than dead."

Horatio peered at Hordriss. "You appear to have blood in your hair. We'll need to take a sample."

Hordriss' eyebrows shot up, as if fleeing the impeding indignation of his mouth. "How dare you? One has told you all you need to know. One will not be plucked!" And with that, he vanished from the cavern.

* * *

Grissom and Keppler looked round sharply at the sound of Treguard's voice. They saw his face, looming like an insistent full moon in the corner of the room.

"Sorry if I startled you. This is a technique I use to supervise encounters in the Dungeon during quests. I doubt that HOGG would approve if I visited the autopsy in person. How goes it?"

"We've only just started. We had to wait for the body to stop shrinking."

The CSIs stood to one side, allowing Treguard to look down at the stone table and satisfy his curiosity about the corpse, which he had yet to see. There lay Bumptious, devoid of clothing and indubitably dwarvish in height, or rather length.

"Usually, establishing time of death is important. But due to your phase shifts, it's meaningless," explained Grissom. "Some indicators put T.O.D. at a day ago, others at several months."

"We'll be examining his blood, his stomach contents, running a tox screen," continued Keppler. "That's testing for poisons. Though it'll take some time. For now, we've ruled out head trauma as a cause of death: the explosion merely led to mild concussion, bruising and cuts, such as this one on his right index finger."

"Forgive me, gentlemen, but did you have to hack him asunder like that?" Bumptious had been sliced open from neck to groin and in several other directions too, as if a blindfolded butcher and his drunken assistant had played noughts and crosses on a hog.

"The victim was found with these incisions," replied Grissom.

It all seemed clear to Treguard. "Ah! Then that must be his cause of death."

Grissom sighed inwardly, but reminded himself that whatdunnit novices are susceptible to red herrings. "We've concluded that due to a number of factors - levels of clotting, pooling and blood spatter at the scene - that the cuts were made after the victim died."

Treguard tried not to look confused: it didn't befit a giant floating face. As he watched, Keppler reached a pair of forceps in through the main incision, felt aorund as if playing lucky dip with inside information, and pulled out his prize. He looked at Treguard. "Does this happen a lot?"

"Certainly not!" spluttered the Dungeon Master, somewhere between appalled and astonished.

"We're used to removing knife points during autopsy, but not whole daggers."

"The blade is consistent with the cuts."

Treguard was calming down. "I don't know who would do such a thing. Or why."

"I'd trust my gut," said Keppler.

Grissom frowned. "You mean the evidence."

"In this case, both." With his black-gloved hand, Keppler had wiped across the blade's handle to reveal a series of carved words. The first was GUT, and those following were the details of the owner.

* * *

The chair rasped at the stone floor as Gundrada the Sword Mistress shifted uncomfortably. She looked at Grissom.

"I think this is jolly unfair, you know. I put my name on Gut so nobody would steal it, and now you think I murdered a dwarf?"

Grissom didn't - because the evidence didn't - but he was after the truth nonetheless. "Tell me what happened."

"I'm new to the region. I went into the goldmine because it seemed like a good place to do some exploring."

Grissom flexed an eyebrow.

"Alright, some looting. But there was nothing. Dwarves must have secured all their gold. Spoilsports. No one around either. Then I came across a miner having a nap. Thought he'd make a good guide, so I tried to wake him up."

"But you couldn't?"

"No. He was dead. Couldn't see how, but he was completely dead. And then I realised he was awfully big for a dwarf. Maybe he's some kind of hobdwarf, I thought. So I decided to open him up and have a look at his insides. Bit fiddly though, and I lost the dagger in there. So I went off to get a wash." Gundrada paused. The investigator seemed to believe her. She sighed. "I've had better days. So has the dwarf, I expect."

Grissom blinked. She was no Lady Heather. "Under very different circumstances, you might be admired for your professional curiosity. But you've broken countless mining guild regualations: trespassing, failure to report a workplace fatality, tampering with a crime scene, abuse of an employee... they've asked that you be kept out of trouble for a while."

Gundrada looked crestfallen. She was escored to Merlin to learn her fate, wondering if she would at least get Gut back.

Meanwhile, Treguard had been asking about the CSIs' lab work, and Keppler was reporting to him on their progress. "We're examining white traces found on the inside of the mine cart. Analysis so far suggests it's some form of cosmetic."

The Dungeon Master looked displeased. "Might it be white facepaint? If so," he blustered, "then I know who is responsible!"


	5. Chapter 5

As he so often did, no sooner had Folly been called into the room than he was making it his stage. Casting a grin at Lieutenant Caine, he posed with his chin in his hand. "Alas, poor Bumptious. I knew him, Horatio. "Which is not to say I knew him well, as I hear he isn't well at all!" His shrill laughter filled the cold chamber.

"Mr. Folly, I suggest," came the calm reply, "you take this seriously."

"'I suggest'? I, Sir, jest indeed. It's what I'm underpaid to do!" Folly didn't tell these strangers that he took all this very seriously. He never asked to be employed in a castle of death. Two Phases ago a boy got blown to pieces because he, Folly, wasn't allowed to tell him the safe path any way other than cryptically. So yes, he took it bloody seriously. But if he didn't laugh in the haggard face of death, and feign lunacy, then his insanity would be quite real. But these straight-faced New World prigs didn't need to know his pain. So Folly kept it gagged beneath his giggling, and muffled beneath his make-up - with its tell-tale smear.

Mac addressed Folly. "You're here because the man who pays you told us that the face paint we found inside the mine cart at Bumptious' murder scene could only have come from you. And he wanted us to make it clear that if you don't cooperate, he'll arrange for you to be moved to a room where your only audience members have eight legs."

"I look forward to a spinning ovation!"

"A room," added Horatio, "with four walls."

This seemedto unnerve Folly: he valued his freedom, such as it was. Time to play their game. His shoulders dropped.

"It was for Gretel. Not long before the Eleventh Quest of the last Phase, I confessed my... admiration to her. She merely laughed. I might have recovered from this, but then I discovered she was spending time with the Dwarf. Whatever could he offer her that I could not? I had to know more than Gretel would tell me. I concealed myself in the mine cart, so as to eavesdrop when they were together."

"How long were you there?"

"I was there when the dungeoneer Karen paid her visit. What pleasure to hear the oaf exploded! What pain to hear Gretel ministering to him. All three left, and still I hid; but when Gretel returned to the pit alone, with teas, I had to ask her, ask her why she was such a tease to me." Folly recounted how this confrontation had led to Gretel spilling one of the teas, firmly rejecting him, and running off to seek Mildread's counsel. Moments later, Bumptious came back, and warned Folly against causing trouble. "He kept jabbing his finger at me, which I didn't much care for: he'd pricked it somehow, and I wanted none of his blood on me. He condemned me as a trespasser, but politely I informed him that since I had helped Master to conquer the Dungeon, I can go where I wish. He was most displeased, so I left before he could shove a shovel at my liripipes."

"Or perhaps you killed him before he could take that swing."

Folly was indignant. "I did not. I am not that kind of fool." For a moment, he wished his make-up were gone. "There is no fun in murdering someone."

"Indeed," agreed Horatio. "Nothing is more serious. And jealousy is the oldest motive, even in this realm." He fixed his eyes on the jester: if he had more secrets to give up, the team would need more forensics to extract them. "You can go. But don't go far."

* * *

"Gretel," began Horatio, looking from her wringing hands to her still face, "Folly has told us that he spoke to you when you returned to the pit. Why didn't you tell us this?"

"Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't want to get him into trouble. He didn't say anything wicked. If I hadn't laughed at him when he tried to woo me, he wouldn't have been there."

"Where we come from, it's known as harassment. And no woman deserves to suffer it."

"Oh no, it's not like that. He's a friend. He's so funny, most of the time. He just needed to talk."

"Bumptious was your friend too," Mac reminded her. "And we've come a long way ot find out what happened to him. The more you tell us, the better we can do that."

"We know it's not easy, but we need the truth. Can you do that for us?"

Gretel looked at Horatio as if he were a puppy wanting attention, and nodded. Composing herself (to her own standard of composure), she gave an account that matched Folly's, and the evidence collected at the crime scene. She had indeed spurned the jester, spilt one of the teas (she'd forgotten which, and the cups were identical) and left both behind when she left to seek Mildread. "She's not really my friend, and actually she's not very nice to me, but... I feel better when I talk to her. Maybe you will too?"

But when Mac asked Treguard to summon Mildread for interview, the Dungeon Master could not comply. "When the Dungeon disintegrates at the end of each Phase, some of the Dungeon folk are lost with it. Mildread has not been heard from since the last Phase, so she is one. We will have to do without her testimony, but she was a witch who could not be trusted, so it is no great loss."

Mac had to hope that Treguard was right, and that despite this realm's differences from his own, the evidence would lead the way, with or without testimonies following it. By this time, Grissom had approached. Evidence analysis was taking longer than he wanted.

"We recovered this parchment from underneath the mine cart. It has red marks that appear to be blood. We've been unable to decipher the script. Do you recognise the handwriting, Lord Dunshelm?"

Treguard tried not to show his eagerness as he took the parchment. After a short silence, his brow furrowed. "Yes. It is Merlin's."


End file.
